To celebrate its tenth birthday, ATP has pulled together a line-up rich with bands from their own label, past curators of the festival and legendary ATP performers.

With such prestige, one can only imagine that bands playing here must feel like bedroom artists did when John Peel got their name wrong or when the NME listed a gig they were playing for the first time. Indeed, some bands are less coy than others: Afrirampo babble near-English gratitudes while performing a special ‘Happy Birthday ATP!’ dance/semaphore intro, Stephen Malkmus is visibly heartened by the crowd’s affection for him and Deerhoof are delirious - though this could be due to Satomi Matsuzaki’s sunny disposition, the frontwoman wheeling around the stage like her rider is made up entirely of Smarties.

Fever To Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs was released, many present would’ve been too young to attend this festival, but not too young to revel in its punky vitality. The record is the first to get the Don’t Look Back treatment this weekend, a complete play-through on stage – one of ATP’s calling cards. Karen O’s chutzpah must be admired – she combats arriving on stage forty minutes late to a torrent of boos with “WE ONLY JUST GOT HERE YOU MOTHERFUCKERS,” spraying champagne over the photographers in the pit and howling her way down the tracklisting with reckless abandon. ‘Maps’ proves the most touching moment of the weekend – a calm after the storm, a time for tears, kisses and heartbeats so big your ribcage can barely deal with them.

By contrast, Sunn O))) are utterly terrifying, Attila Csihar coming on half-man, half-tree with the lasers embedded in his gloves piercing the thick fog the stage is constantly filled with. The sub-bass growl vibrates every part of every body in the room, sending us off to sleep on the Sunday night feeling thoroughly disturbed by what has occurred. Another weekend of fascinating spectacles, frenetic Crazy Horse dancing and limit-stretching feats of bodily/auditory endurance – only 145 days til the next one!


Jon Fisher